“Oh my god.” They reached over and grabbed a perfectly fried ball of cornmeal. “You made hush puppies, too?”
“Yeah . . .” Dahlia winced. “Sorry, I know they’re more of a Carolina thing—”
“Dahlia,” London interrupted before stuffing it in their mouth. “Never, ever apologize for hush puppies.” And then they groaned.
And realized they were starving.
London tucked into the potato salad and then some greens, and they were just about to pick up a rib when Dahlia stomped on their foot.
“Ow!” They laughed, their mouth still full.
“Stop making all those noises! It’s . . . ” London looked over and realized Dahlia’s cheeks were flushed. “It’s unfair.”
London grinned. “Well, if I’m about to watch you eat ribs and suck sauce off your fingers, which I’m pretty sure I’m about to do, I’d call us about even.”
Dahlia blushed even harder. “God, I can’t wait to kiss you.”
London stopped in their tracks.
She was right. They had eaten some of the food now. Kissing was obviously in order.
They dropped their fork and stood from their chair. Thank god these judge’s chairs were ridiculously oversized, like three seats made for kings. It made it surprisingly easy to slide onto Dahlia’s lap, to straddle their knees next to her hips.
Dahlia let out a small, shaky breath. It was the sexiest thing London had ever heard.
They took her face in their hands.
Her eyelids fluttered on her cheeks, her focus shifting to their lips.
London ran a hand around Dahlia’s neck, slinking a hand into her hair, stretching out their fingers, feeling the silky strands between each one. She closed her eyes fully and leaned her head back into their palm, releasing a soft whimper.
“Dahlia.” London leaned forward, pressed a kiss in turn onto each of her eyelids. “Dahlia.” They sighed into her cheek. “I missed you so much.”
And then a timer went off.
Dahlia’s eyes blinked open. “Oh, shit!” She shoved London to the side, and they stumbled off the chair. “I almost forgot!”
She ran around the judge’s table and over to London’s station, where a stove was beeping. She tugged on an oven mitt. After London had recovered from their seduction being so rudely interrupted, they joined her and stared at what she had just unearthed from the oven.
“Did you make me sweet potato pie ?”
London didn’t want this night to ever end.
“Yeah?” Dahlia said nervously. “Julie said it was your favorite. But it was sort of hard to tell, over DM, if she was just messing with me or not. If you don’t—”
“No, no, Dahlia. I love it.”
London looked at her a second more and then pushed off from the countertop.
“Hey,” they said. “Stay right there for a minute. Seriously, don’t move.”
Dahlia gave them a funny look. “Okay.”
London walked behind her.
They took a few steps to the right. Considered. Yeah, this was about right. This was about where their old station would have been.
They looked at her hair, at the back of her neck. Her shoulders were tense, uncertain. Like she was waiting to be called to the Golden Circle. But her cooking tonight had been perfect. She should already know she’d blown the competition away.
London made her wait a minute more.
“This is where I fell in love with you,” they said.
Slowly, she turned. She was smiling, no teeth, almost shy.
“And this is where I fell in love with you.”
London smiled back. “But you were facing away from me. You couldn’t even see me.”
“Yeah,” Dahlia said softly. “But I always knew you were there.”
London made a quick assessment of their surroundings. The station where they had cooked the meal of their life earlier today, where she had just cooked hers, was an absolute mess, dirty pots and pans everywhere, along with a cooling sweet potato pie.
They stepped forward and shoved it all away. Except for the pie, of course. A pan clattered loudly to the floor and Dahlia gasped. London took her by the waist, twirling her around, pushing her back against their countertop. And then they did something they’d secretly wanted to do for weeks. They picked her up and shoved her on top of the table, in this place where they had cooked and pined for her and loved her. They stepped between her legs, which she immediately wrapped around them, and, at last, they leaned in and kissed her.
Dahlia kissed them back, cupping their face in her palms, tasting like peppermint, smelling of coconut and barbecue, everything striking and precious and her. For once, she was taller than them, and it felt strangely thrilling. But her tongue pressing against theirs was so familiar, the sighs in her throat the soundtrack London had been missing, her lips tugging at the most alive places in their body, the places they had already pushed so deeply away in her absence, that were thrumming back to life.